Feds fail in blocking money transfers for Free the Five ad

From Free The Five.org

The National Committee to Free the Cuban Five is pleased to announce that the wire transfers seized by the U.S. Department of Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control, and Wachovia Bank have been released into the bank account held by “International Peace for Cuba Appeal.”

These transfers came from the Coordinadora Andaluza de Solidaridad con Cuba, from Andalucía, Spain, and the National Coordinator for the French Committee to Free the Cuban Five, and will help pay for the upcoming ad in the New York Times publicizing the case of the Cuban Five.

The Committee celebrates the release of the funds as a major victory, and condemns the U.S. government’s unjust policy of abridging the free speech rights of organizations working in solidarity with Cuba.
 
REMINDER - LOOK OUT FOR THE CUBAN FIVE AD IN THE NY TIMES: a full page ad on the Cuban Five will appear in the New York Times on any day from February 26 to March 10 (except Saturdays and Sundays).

Several dedicated lawyers worked tirelessly and without pay behind-the-scenes to get these funds unblocked. They are to be congratulated!

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Nader

The Village Voice opines:
 
If the DLC wonks, unimaginative leftists, and others devoted to the “Beat Bush” agenda can manage to stop gnashing their teeth over Ralph Nader’s “betrayal” long enough to really think about it, they might just find that the consumer advocate’s candidacy can help, rather than hurt, their cause.

The Republican political strategists apparently believe that the election could be decided by the base supporters of both parties. If the Democratic candidates want to lose more of their base than they already have, then they should go ahead and attack Nader for being a spoiler.

From The Guardian:

Don’t blame Ralph Nader for President George Bush. Blame Al Gore, or Hillary Clinton, or better still George Bush. Clarence Thomas, the US supreme court judge, had more responsibility for elevating Bush than Nader did. So don’t try to lock up poor old Ralph. Let him run around in the yard a bit. He won’t go far.

Actually, Nader will probably do quite well in getting his message across. He’s survived, and survived well for 40 years in DC against powerful wealthy opponents who’d like to see him be smoking rubble.  He knows, and can play the game better than most Senators.

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The Doonesbury 10K

Doonesbury is offering $10,000 to anyone who can confirm Dubya’s story about being in the National Guard, saying “His teeth were there. Was he?”

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Global warming story was hyped

From the Sam Smith’s Progressive Review, Sam being a long time hardcore Green.

A journalist reader writes - I spoke with the co-author of the “secret” Pentagon report [on climate change] yesterday and he said the Observer report you ran (and which I was about to do a story on) is almost entirely fallacious. For one thing, it’s not a secret report– it’s on the web. For another, it was already reported in Fortune.

And most important, it’s not a “prediction” but a “extremely unlikely worst-case scenario.” What’s still interesting is that Bush’s two favorite interests, defense and oil, are now apparently at odds if the Pentagon is interested enough in global warming to be commissioning studies about it. They aren’t exactly an alarmist environmental group.

The Observer clearly hyped the story and was wrong about it being secret  - in fact, the Review had earlier cited the Fortune article - but this is a story about what scientists call ‘phase transitions’ - a sudden alteration in state as when water turns to ice or steam - and while we can’t predict when or where or how they may occur in nature they are far less than a “worst case scenario.” In fact, they are quite predictable except for knowing when, where and how.

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Bloggers. Atom to RSS

This is geek talk. Non-geeks may wish to skip this!

Atom is a new form of XML that not all blogs can yet handle. Isen.blog, which just switched to Atom from RSS, explains how RSS blogs can effortlessly convert Atom feeds to RSS.

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More proof satire is becoming impossible to do

In case you missed this:

Education Secretary Rod Paige called the National Education Association a “terrorist organization”

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